Near the Oval, a Touch of Truthiness

WHEN it was announced in May that Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, the huge apartment complexes owned and managed by Tishman Speyer, would receive more than 2,000 exotic animals as part of a large-scale luxury conversion, a neighborhood blog called Lux Living was the first and only outlet to report the story.

“In addition to the snakes, birds and cougars,” the blog reported, “later this month tenants will be able to view Stuy Town’s own Loch Ness Monster in the new moat being constructed.”

Such barbed musings are aimed with unambiguous loathing at the management, which in 2006 bought Peter Cooper and Stuyvesant Town, two complexes of 110 red-brick buildings along the East River. The postings have also delighted and sometimes confounded residents at a time of change, as Tishman Speyer introduces amenities like a concierge, a movie theater and live music in a community long known as the city’s largest middle-class redoubt.

Residents, many of whom express a burning curiosity to know the satirist’s identity, may be surprised to know he does not live in the neighborhood. Since April, when the blog began, its creator, a 32-year-old Web designer, has lived in Alphabet City after making his home in Stuyvesant Town for nearly a decade.

“If you have a sense of humor, it makes these things easier to digest than just another angry, foaming-at-the-mouth-rant,” said the author, who would speak about the blog only anonymously. He explained that his name remained on a lease of his former apartment, which he shared with a former boyfriend who he fears would be evicted if the identity of the blogger were known.

Posts, which appear on the blog almost daily, often focus on a paradox: inconvenience to residents as an incompetent management team installs luxuries that residents don’t even want.

Exaggeration is the rule, though according to the author, “There’s an element of truth to every post.”

On Tuesday, during one of his daily walks through Stuyvesant Town, he paused at a group of unplanted and decaying young trees corralled behind a temporary fence. “There’s no shortage of things to write about,” he said wryly.

Comments on the community’s online tenant association forum have praised the blog, but some have questioned its motives.

“So what’s up?” asked one prospective Stuyvesant Town resident. “Do you want to live there or not?” Others have urged the blogger to clearly identify his work as parody to avoid being sued, though the author said he was not worried.

This sentiment is despite absurdly false statements. One post reported that a landscaping project had unearthed toxic remnants that led to residents being stricken with cancer. Another post was about the fountain in the Oval, Stuyvesant Town’s main court, flowing with beer thanks to a corporate contribution made after management’s repair effort ran out of money. The post quotes a Tishman Speyer executive as saying, “Thank God Corona could bail us out!”

Management is not amused.

“We don’t think fake reports about things like cancer are funny, entertaining or helpful for our residents,” said Bud Perrone, a Tishman Speyer spokesman. He also noted that the blog did not seem to be hurting rentals, adding, “The last few months have been our biggest leasing months so far.”